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Wednesday, September 7, 2016

CHSH-Teach.com Subscription (A Schoolhouse Crew Review)

I love using handouts for homeschooling, but I am one of those who can not make them myself. In the past, I've used pay per handout style sheets, searching in the hopes that someone else has made a handout similar to what I am looking for and compromising when they weren't. I also had a free membership to the website CHSH-Teach.com (Christian HomeSchool Hub) and had used some of their free resources in the past so when I was given the opportunity to review the annual subscription to the CHSH Download Club, I knew it was a subscription that I would be able to use often with my family.

CHSH-Teach.com was started by Lynda Ackert, a mother and public school teacher both in Public Schools and overseas for the Department of Defense for over 20 years. After becoming a mother, Mrs Ackert made the choice to homeschool her children which led to her realizing that she enjoyed making printables and handouts and wanted to share this with other homeschool families. Thus, the Christian HomeSchool Hub was created.

With well over 50,000 pages of printable educational material for grades K-12, the Christian
HomeSchool Hub offers a wide arrange of subject material, from core classes such as Math, Language Arts and Sciences on through Bible studies as well as electives such as Foreign Language and Physical Education. Materials are arranged in such a way that makes searching by subject, grade and month easy. There's also a search bar that allows the option to search by topic, category or key words to quickly find what you are looking for.

The Christian Homeschool Hub is more than just a download site, however. Members have the option of contributing their own materials. From flashcards, full scans of out of print books, lapbooks, notebooking pages and planners, members are able to upload their own creations to share with other members. There's also a forum for members to share information among each other.

How We Used CHSH-Teach.com

Daily Geography Worksheets

Navigating through the offerings at CHSH-Teach.com can be equivelent to a kid in the candy store. There is so many wonderful selections. The first few days of access, I spent time browsing the various subjects and downloading things that I knew I could use with my 3rd graders.

The first item that really caught my eye was the Daily Geography Curriculum for 3rd-5th Grade. Consisting of 157 pages, this 36 week Geography curriculum consists of mapwork and activities that teach children valuable skills such as recognizing time zones, longitudinal and latitudinal lines, and reading various types of maps. Each day, students review the lesson and then answer a few questions about what they are learning. This geography curriculum was easily introduced in addition to our Charlotte Mason style geography lessons.

We also elected to begin the Character Study curriculum. This curriculum focuses on a character trait each week, suggesting books to read that demonstrate the trait and have students explain how the characters in the book show each trait. There are 40 lessons ranging from traits such as Greedy, Impatient, Compassionate, Tolerance and Stubborn.

Book Units were another focus that we decided to work with and we enjoyed these very much. CHSH-Teach.com offers various Book Units for different grade levels. So far we've done the units for Where the Wild Things Are and Jumanji. The book units ask questions in regards to what the students have read and then ask them to interpret the story in their own words (and also with pictures). For our grade level, the studies were only a few pages and were not overwhelming for them to complete. The books are popular selections, which I was very grateful for since our library on base has a rather limited selection.

Since my kids are very hesitant writers, I opted for one of the handwriting options. The Read It, Write It, Draw It selections were perfect for this. These selections include copy work about the life cycle of butterflies, ladybugs, frogs and from seed to flowers. We were easily able to complete one of these books each week.

Many of the items we've been using these last few weeks are items that I plan to keep using throughout the school year, such as the Daily Geography, Character Studies and Book Units. In addition to these, there are so many things that I cannot wait to incorporate into our year. Just last week, the website added Monthly Learning Packs for K-2nd Grade, with plans to add more grades shortly. As these types of packs are something I tend to buy from another website for about 10 bucks a month, I cannot wait to start using these with my kids next week. Also, there's a wonderful curriculum to teach basic facts about the 50 States that I plan on starting next week as well as a full California State curriculum that I hope to incorporate later in the year. Needless to say, I already have a file folder on my computer chocked full of things that I hope to do with the kids in the next 40 weeks.

CHSH-Teach.com is a wonderful resource and I am so grateful to have the opportunity to use it with my children. While a free membership is available that allows for limited access to the website, an annual membership that gives full access to everything the Download Club offers is reasonable priced at only $25 per year. A lifetime membership is also available for $99.

For more information about CHSH-Teach.com and the Christian HomeSchool Hub, visit their website of visit them on any of their social media sites: